


where to begin

by dollsome



Category: Downton Abbey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:44:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/pseuds/dollsome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don’t have to like her, Lavinia has decided, but they must accept her. She isn’t going anywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where to begin

**Author's Note:**

> Set between 2x06 & 2x07.

Christmas at Downton Abbey feels like a dream. Everything is too big and too ornately beautiful; the quaint bustle of the village seems like a painting come to life, so unlike the giddy rush of London. Lavinia smiles as often as she can and makes sure to keep her posture perfect, especially when the Dowager Countess is in the room. They don’t have to like her, Lavinia has decided, but they must accept her. She isn’t going anywhere. She hopes the liking will come in time.

Mary is still her favorite of them all. It is a little unusual, but Lavinia’s starting to think there will be nothing usual about her life. She doesn’t mind that so much. She has Matthew again, and will take anything else as it comes.

Matthew spends the afternoon talking to Lord Grantham in the library. Lavinia wanders the house that will be hers one day and tries not to feel like an intruder in it. It still feels like a church or a ruin to her, grandly commanding silence. She considers the tree, exquisitely decorated and far too big to be anywhere besides outside – outside, or in this house’s foyer. Will she ever feel at home here, with only herself and Matthew to fill it—

“It’s a bit subdued this year.” She catches a glimpse through the branches of Mary coming down the stairs. The briskness of her voice does a good job of extinguishing whatever melancholy crosses its path. “But I suppose lavish Christmas celebrations would be in bad taste, with the war just ended.”

“It’s beautiful,” Lavinia says truthfully.

“Next year ought to be better,” Mary replies, coming to stand beside her. “You’ll see. You’ll have no short supply of Christmases at Downton.”

“And you must be here for all of them,” Lavinia says, the words prompted by guilt (and something else she cannot quite pinpoint).

Mary lifts an eyebrow. “A lifelong invitation?”

“I’m the one who ought to be invited.” So much for no longer apologizing for her presence – but it’s different, with Mary.

“I don’t know if Sir Richard will be very keen on the idea,” Mary says; she says her fiancé’s name with a distaste she doesn’t bother to hide. It makes Lavinia feel sorry for her. “But just between you and me, I don’t particularly care.”

Lavinia takes a moment to admire how unflinching she is. Remembers weeping in the guest bedroom, heart breaking at the thought of leaving Matthew behind. She cannot imagine what strength it must take to be Mary Crawley. “Thank you, Mary.”

“For what?”

She doesn’t know. She’s not sure where to begin.

“You’ve been so good to me,” Lavinia finally says.

“That’s an accusation I don’t often hear,” Mary says with a short laugh.

“Well, you should,” Lavinia assures her, “much more often.”

She presses her lips to Mary’s cheek on impulse, and doesn’t think twice until she’s pulled away. Mary is looking at her with a kind of bewilderment that would be awkward on anyone else’s face.

It’s so easy to forget how distant these people are. And meanwhile Lavinia doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to unstitch her heart from her sleeve.

“I’m sorry,” she says, flushing.

“You’re sweet,” Mary answers, pressing her hand to Lavinia’s forearm briefly. “I’m not used to it, that’s all.”

Lavinia wonders if she will ever get the chance to be, with Sir Richard Carlisle as her husband.

“When I was a little girl,” Mary begins, her eyes on the tree now instead of Lavinia, “I decided I wanted to live in this tree. Well, one of its ancestors. I was very impatient to have a place of my own. That was back before I quite understood that women seldom get one of those even once they’ve grown up. I refused to come out for hours. Finally, Carson had to crawl down on hands and knees to coax me.”

“Perhaps you were a wood nymph in another life,” Lavinia suggests, smiling a little.

“Perhaps I was a tree,” Mary says, mouth curving. “Do you know the Daphne and Apollo myth?”

“Yes,” Lavinia says. “I’ve just brushed up on it, in fact. Matthew’s been pouring over Bulfinch’s Mythology, and I was flipping through it only a few nights ago. He borrowed it from your father’s library, I think.”

Something crosses Mary’s face, then tucks itself neatly away.

“Turn into a tree to escape a man,” she says dryly. “There’s one idea.”

 _Marry the one you’re meant to. There’s another._

But Matthew is so broken now, and even when he was whole he couldn’t quite make sense of Mary in his heart. And besides, try as she might, Lavinia cannot see Mary content to be shackled to Matthew’s side, playing nursemaid every day of her life.

She is being sensible. Not selfish. If the time ever comes when that changes—

She looks at Mary, who gazes into the branches with a wistful smile, and knows what she will do, should that time ever come.


End file.
